Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 31, 2024
White and ruddy was his beardless countenance. Bright as gold which boils over the edge of the refiner's crucible was his hair, which fell curling upon his broad shoulders and over the circumference of his shield, outshining its splendour. By his side hung a short sword with a handle of walrus-tooth; in his left hand he bore two spears tipped with glittering bronze.
Fire turns what it touches into kindred flame. The refiner's fire melts metal, and the scum carries away impurities. Water washes the surface, fire pierces to the centre. But while that cleansing by the Spirit's fire was to be Messiah's primary office, man's freedom to accept or reject such blessing necessarily made His work selective, even while its destination was universal.
I see this so clearly, Doctor, that I shudder inwardly at the bare imagination of committing such a wrong." "It is by trial that God proves us," said I, "and may He bring you out of this one, should the trial come, as gold from the refiner's furnace!" "Amen!" was her solemnly uttered response; "if it should come, may I be found strong enough to do the right!"
'His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, and every man that has any reality of Christian life in him should pray that this pruning and cutting out of the dead wood may be done, and that He would 'come as a refiner's fire and purify' His priesthood. Then there is the other side, the pruning of the fruitful branches.
To us, perhaps, in computing the fortune of any one whom we hold dear, it may seem more needful to inquire not whether he has had enough of joy, but whether he has had enough of sorrow; whether the blows of circumstance have wholly shaped his character from the rock; whether his soul has taken lustre and purity in the refiner's fire.
The images of the refiner's fire and the fullers' soap imply painful processes, of which the intention is to burn out the dross and beat out the filth.
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.
You cannot be saved by Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit without seeing yourself, and you cannot see yourself without hating yourself, and you cannot begin to hate yourself without all your hatred henceforth turning against yourself. You are deep in the red-hot bosom of the refiner's fire.
For He might speak here, not as we poor scribes can speak at best, but with an authority, originality, earnestness, as well as an eloquence, which might exercise a fascination, which would be, to all with whom He came in contact, what Malachi calls it, "a refiner's fire" most purifying, though often most painful to the very best; a fascination which might be to every one who came under its spell a veritable Judgment and Day of the Lord, shewing each man with fearful clearness to which side he really inclined at heart in the struggle between truth and falsehood, good and evil; a fascination, therefore, equally attractive to those who wished to do right, and intolerable to those who wished to do wrong.
There underlies it the frequent thought which is familiar in Scripture, of trouble of all kinds as testing a man, whether as the refiner's fire or the winnower's fan. It tests a man, and if he bears the trouble with patient persistence, then he has passed the test and is approved.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking